Hey! If you're not going to finish that muffin, hand it over — I'm sure that I can fob it off one of my kids. Or mush it up and sprinkle it over top of some oatmeal. In this week's post for Today's Parent, I reveal how I am cultivating a household of immunity warriors by throwing cast-off soup back into the pot. Grab a glass — oh, any glass; do you really care who drank out of it last? You do? Weird — out of the sink and fill it with water, and click on over to learn how you, too, can become bionic and get over your germophobia:

We all do that, don’t we? (Say yes.) I mean, for those of us who are lucky enough to have both children and enough food to spare, there’s a certain amount of figuring out what to do with, say, that second bowl of oatmeal that Isaac swore up and down he really wanted but then barely touched, or the half-piece of French toast Rowan left on his plate, or the half–chicken kebab from the souvlaki dinner. I try to serve small portions, with the idea that the kids can have more if they’re still hungry, but the fact of the matter is that in our house, a lot of my children’s leftovers are — for want of a better term — upcycled. The oatmeal goes back in the pot, as does the soup. The rice gets scraped back into the container (or, sometimes into the soup). Rachel eats Rowan’s rejected yogurt from lunch in her lunch the next day. And so on.